Subject: Re: [lojban] cipja'o

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 14:55:06 EDT

In a message dated 5/1/2002 9:05:48 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I am unclear just what "beyond calculation" means here. Not
> > apparently, "incalculable," since even my pocket calculator gives values
> > for both of these -- approximations, of course, but that suggests that 
> real
> > values are available (though infinitely long, I suppose). Somehow
> > inadmissible, like division by 0? But again ... . Such that the
> > distinction between fractions and not does not apply? Does any of this 
> say
> > that the presented proof is not a proof?
> 
> I meant "transcendental". What's the right word?
> 
> I don't know the proof; I just saw it stated on Wikipedia. Finding out that 
> 
> the number is irrational does not invalidate the proof.
> 

Thanks; I really was unclear about the point. As for the right word, since I 
forget the difference between irrational and transcendantal, I was happy with 
{nalfrinu} till now. Now, having three not obviously equivalent definitions 
of "transcendental" (just in mathematics), I am even less sure. I suppose 
what fits here it the old infinite non-repeating decimal expansion -- which 
gives a horrible definition-type lujvo (though not as bad as "neither root 
nor quotient of rationals" or "not definable by an finite number of 
rationally coefficiented equations") Time for a good metaphor, which "beyond 
computing" just may be, though it clearly sets off alarms in many people's 
belief webs.

jay.kominek
<For what its worth, a transcendental function is one which cannot be
expressed in algebraic terms.>
But this is about transcendental numbers, which, though presumably related, 
are not quite the same thing: the algebra seems OK here -- unless rational 
coefficients are required to call it algebra. We don't, of course, have a 
word for algebra either (nor hardly any other branch of mathematics -- or 
anything else).

greg:
<> .i ru'a lo'i namcu poi se skicu do fo zo kajbancu du lo'i namcu poi
na'eka'e
> pixra zbasu .i xu go'i .i .e'u ri selcme zo nalpirzbana'u>

I worry about {pixra zbasu} here, but I suppose the point is "can be 
pictured" somehow or other. That doesn't seem quite the point, although it 
is a bit hard to picture some of them, while others work pretty easily: the 
root-twoth power of root-two doesn't do a thing for me, but pi (surely 
transcendental if anything is) is just how much you have to stretch the 
diameter of a circle to wrap it around. But maybe it is a less distracting 
metaphor (trimmed down a bit).